Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday October 05, 2012 @12:22PM
from the we-have-all-kinds-of-light-waves-to-blast-you-with dept.

OverTheGeicoE writes "Boston's Logan International Airport is in the process of replacing its X-ray body scanners with millimeter-wave ones. According to the article, nine of the new scanners have been installed already, and ultimately 27 of these scanners will replace the 17 X-ray backscatter scanners that were installed in March of 2010. The new devices are 'being installed come with software that replaces "passenger-specific images" — or nearly naked views of travelers — with generic outlines that highlight only anomalies such as belts, jewelry, wallets — or guns or bombs.' Perhaps this will help TSA workers avoid being part of a cancer cluster. Some speculate that TSA will ultimately eliminate all of its X-ray body scanners."

my contention is there would be no scanners if no one could make a profit on them.

Yeah - Free market rules!

Oh, wait, these are government mandated devices (pushed through with Chertoff's help who also consults with the contractor). And no one does any quality control - they are proven to be ineffective at actually detecting dangerous items, but more are bought anyway

It's like saying that if the speeding ticket/toll booth collection wasn't profitable it wouldn't exist.

Food is essential but farmers are allowed to make a profit on it. The scanners are offensive because of the loss of freedom they represent, not because someone is making a profit on them.

People _need_ food.
The scanner are _mandated_ by law.

Profiting from something that had been decreed necessary and made a monopoly by the government is the problem. Where are my non-TSA airports so that I could vote with my wallet? They would probably be cheaper, but I'd pay more to make my point.

Rightly or wrongly, many things are mandated by the government and sometimes even made monopolistic (seatbelts, vaccines, safety testing, etc.). There is nothing wrong with companies profiting from filling such needs. What is wrong is the loss of freedom that comes from the naked scanners (and the fact that they're ineffective, possibly dangerous, and were awarded to a government insider).

What is your objection to them making money on a specialized product like that?

They make money even after devices have been shown unsafe (I believe the old xray machines have been banned in Europe for some time due to health concerns) and even after the devices have been shown ineffective.

They should be making zero profit (maybe just cover the costs) from a device that has not delivered on the specifications. Without stringent quality control, that's literally just money being shuffled to contractors.

What in the fuck does that have to do with the point you were trying to make.

You were making the argument that the company making these machines is making a profit and for some reason you think that is wrong. I was asking what your objection is to them making a profit, not whether or not they were needed in the first place.

Why should a private company be asked to forsake all profits just because the government is mandating that their product be used? That is the question I would like to see you answer.

They make money even after devices have been shown unsafe (I believe the old xray machines have been banned in Europe for some time due to health concerns)

The latter is true: X-ray backscatter machines were banned in Europe because of health concerns. The former is not true: they have not been shown to be unsafe. (It's probably most accurate to say that they've been shown to be safe, but that the level of evidence is unconvincing to many.)

It shouldn't surprise you that the Europeans, too, sometimes make decisions based on the feelings of their politicians and populace and not on hard evidence.

What is your objection to them making money on a specialized product like that?

My main problem is it seems like a government official created a mandate, so a particular company could profit.
Were there bids for the devices?
Was there any study done to indicate the devices would solve the problem (which isn't a problem, but that is a separate issue)
Was there a study done to indicate the devices would be safe?
Or were they built, knowing they would be replaced in just a few years?

In a capitalist country, airports would purchase the devices if these were needed by shopping around and choosing the best provider. And then if the public wanted the devices in the airport, the airports that had the devices would flourish (or vice versa). Also, in a capitalist country, devices that were demonstrably flawed (at actually detecting things) would be returned for a refund

Now in a communist country, the government might mandate that the devices must be built, irregardless of whether these devices actually work and installed everywhere. By the one contractor chosen by their government friends

The economics of airports barely work out as it is, I cannot imagine more than one airport *in the same location* competing with each other. I'm luck and I live near 3 airports, but the time and money involved in getting to/from those airports differs wildly. To really compete, the time/money needed to get to each airport would have to be comparable/competitive.

The feasibility of competition between airports driving innovation aside, your definition of a capitalist country leaves much to be desired. Would

1. its still an invasion of privacy as the outline concept or any other concept related to the technology cannot be verified
2. its still a health risk [technologyreview.com]
tin foil bonus round: it would also be much easier considering the entirety of the TSA revolves around security theater to simply remove the existing units, replace the chassis, and reinstall them with livery to suggest millimeter wave scanning is in progress.

The key problems with the X-ray machines were:1. They were invasive searches without anything remotely similar to probable cause.2. They don't actually stop people from carrying bombs onto aircraft (as has been tested several times).

In the US virtually all x-ray machines (including medical) are operated by un-certified radiologists. Radiologists interpret the images, they do not (typically) run the imaging devices. Radiographer or radiologic technologist (or just "tech" as they are typically called in the field) run the devices. Fortunately, the techs in medicine are typically well trained and certified. I'm not sure about the TSA team, but probably not so much. So your overall point is probably still accurate.

I always thought the problem was calibration, and more specifically that the company responsible for building and selling these was also responsible for ongoing testing, calibration and certification -- a clear conflict of interest. After that series of articles in the NYTimes a couple years ago about people getting fried to death in misconfigured x-ray machines, fear of ending up like Spock (before re-genesis of course, but I digress) was my main reason for taking the pat-down every time.

Secondary reason was European airports banning them, but that has since been reversed. UK doesn't let you opt for pat-downs, not sure about the rest of Europe.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm about to cite the Daily Mail), but it looks like [dailymail.co.uk] they're no longer in use in the EU -- the Manchester use was a temporary extension [metro.co.uk], an exception to the general ban last year.

According to this [metro.co.uk] the Manchester machines will be replaced by the end of October.

That means kicking your neighbor in the balls when they say or do anything in support of the TSA. That means slapping your girlfriend when she says something retarded like "if it means I arrive safely then it's okay".

So what do we do with the idiots who advocate violence in response to someone freely expressing their personal beliefs?

As my upper-middle-class, female, New Yorker friend just found out, the problem with the sanitized images is that forgetting a dime in your pocket will cause it to trigger a general alert and you'll be whisked aside for gate-rape.

And let's not forget that a butt-bomb, like that used by terrorists in Saudi Arabia in 2009, is still undetectable by gropers and scanners.

Yeah, but some of us have rectums capable of allowing objects to exit as well as enter. So it may be possible that a terrorist has this capability as well, along with, say, a few of his friends, who could then assemble the device outside their anal cavity.

Wow, and I figured someone would have replied with "Well then they just stick their ass to the window of the plane and kiss it goodbye."

But yes, it is possible for a few people to get on a plane, go to the bathroom, pull bomb parts out of their ass, and then assemble them on the plane. There are simpler ways of going about it, but it is possible.

That happened to me recently. Actually it was two dimes in one pocket that set off the machine. The process went a little like this: I got asked a few times what I had in my right pocket, waited for a male TSA employee to come over, waited for the TSA agents to stop bickering, got a quick patdown (including a few squeezes of my pockets), turned my pocket inside out, discovered two dimes, went on my way. All the while I was staring at an outline of my body with a couple of red squares highlighting the ar

My first (and only, so far) experience with these machines had the machine highlight 3 areas, the button on the front of my pants (no belt, just the plastic button) and both my cargo pockets, 1 of which contained my wallet, the other contained a single piece of paper folded over.If these machines don't like things in your pockets, you should be told to empty your pockets first!Though the person running the machine did admit that the machine doesn't like cargo pockets, even empty. I think the biggest surpris

This actually happened in my case too -- they identified the piece of paper that caused the error and that was it. Most places I've been to, though, they make it abundantly clear that you need to remove *everything* from your pockets. As you point out, it's a pretty useless system if they don't.

I had just finished going through the metal detector, and while I was about to collect my tray load of stuff, a person came up to me and asked me to come with him. he carried my tray of stuff and asked if I had heard about the new scanners, I said that I knew of them, but had never experienced one. The entire instructions I got were "stand here, hold your arms up, turn around" then he pointed out the yellow squares on the screen showing the "suspicious" areas. Had I been asked to remove things from my pocke

As my upper-middle-class, female, New Yorker friend just found out, the problem with the sanitized images is that forgetting a dime in your pocket will cause it to trigger a general alert and you'll be whisked aside for gate-rape.

And let's not forget that a butt-bomb, like that used by terrorists in Saudi Arabia in 2009, is still undetectable by gropers and scanners.

When the multimeter wave scanners were installed, it was a lot of "don't worry, only a subset of travelers will be subjected to it" and "you can choose to be sexually molested instead". Fast forward a few years and now they're replacing regular X-ray machines with them.

How soon before you have to pass through one to go into a government building? A grocery store? Outside your own home?

When anonymous gets a hold of the image data and tags it to passenger's facebook wall... that will be the day public has had enough. It is hard to get people off the theater. When anonymous puts a hold of the image data and publishes senator's likenesses, that will be the day they outlaw it.

Boston airport sucks great big dirty donkey dicks with a side order of shit.

If you have to go to any other terminal in the building you have to go though security again, and again. It can take well over half an hour to move from one part of the airport to another. It is fucking stupid and frustrating, the wife and I will do our best to avoid that airport from here on out considering the fun we had last time going though.

Good, I can stop requesting on a hand search when I fly out of Boston. It's not that I consider the exposure particularly hazardous--I don't; I've voluntarily exposed myself to far more radiation over the years--I just saw no point in additional exposure to ionizing radiation when I can avoid it, and I don't really mind the hand search.

At the risk of beating a dead horse... I'd like to share my experience with beating these systems. I'm personally much more interested in Boston's integration of Israeli style interview tactics. I lived in the Middle East for a couple years and went through the borders on an almost daily basis, and several times through the Tel Aviv airport (Israel's only international airport). Israel doesn't use anything resembling our body scanners, and instead relies on brief interviews of every person flying to determi

Why? Why this constant comparison to Israel?
Why not just get rid of it completely?
What does the "security" do? Here, in Israel, or anywhere else?
Interviews are mostly pointless. Any good person will breeze right through it. And only a TRAINED interviewer will have a chance of catching something.
But really, what is the point? To catch some mythical bombers? IF someone wanted to bomb a plane, they will figure out a way (and wait, they HAVE) whether we have professional interviewers, or radiation scann